There's really no point in continuing with this experiment now.
I have strong confidence in the technical side of this project, meaning that I believe that ITER will work, and generate net energy. Unfortunately it's not clear to me how much we'll actually learn in that process; this is an engineering project more than a scientific one.
I have zero confidence that the ITER path (and related approaches) is one that will ever result in commercial power generation. The energy density of ITER is far too low to be useful, and the only way to improve that is to make more expensive machines. There's no evidence that the technology scales down in cost, and that any approach along this "big dumb" line is useful. Very smart people at the power companies have already given it a big thumbs-down.
This money needs to be turned to other projects. For the price of ITER we can fund a whole bunch of smaller science projects, projects that at least have some hope of being actually useful. HiPER is one that cries out for funding, but so does magnetized target fusion and the polywell. Unlike ITER, the physics of these experiments is not yet understood, but IF they do work then they are FAR less expensive to build. That is a much better way to spend research money IMHO.
> Instead a flat fee of $31 for the artist makes me excited that this could really be big for indie artists
Wow, yeah.
So this basically reduces the major labels to their back catalog. No one that knows about this service would sign unless they already have major sales - and that's an even STRONGER argument for using this service. You retain all rights, get 40% of the take, and costs you one lunch bill?
What freaks me out is that the labels, after staring this in the face for decades, still can't figure out how to sell their catalog. They have 10,000,000 songs in the database, but the only thing they can figure out is how to sell the newest 40.
> The lack of studio-mandated voice-over certainly makes the film more moody and atmospheric.
Give me a break. It leaves frustratingly long periods of blank looks while the actors sit there and stare at each other during the periods that formerly held the dialog.
> As he asked Dr. Dehner in TOS about Gary Mitchell and his god-like powers, "But what will he learn along the way?" In the reboot, the answer is basically "nothing"
But that does bring up one of the other few scenes I liked. After watching one of the worst bits of acting in the movie during the whatever Maru simulation, Spock points out that the entire idea is to teach the fleet how to operate even facing certain death. As Spock points, by "winning" the scenario, Kirk actually LOST the scenario.
Now that, I think, is an interesting point. If they had gone down this road a little more I think I might have enjoyed the movie a little more. But no, after pointing this out they then turn around completely and allow the character to do anything he wants with no fear whatsoever.
Thinking back over it again, I realize in retrospect that what made the earlier shows (not a huge fan, have watched some of the original and NG) work was that Kirk wasn't superhuman, he was _experienced_. His capabilities were clearly hard won, and you could see this in the stars on his chest. And Picard? That character oozed experience in every missing hair on his head. We weren't watching superhumans, we were watching extremely _qualified_ humans, which is, in my books, a very different and much more believable reality.
The _story_ was flimsy? What wasn't? Most of the acting was poor to middling, at best. There was no attempt at any development, either plot nor character. It was all action action action.
And I didn't find the action - with the exception of the sword fight - particularly interesting either. Ships are either utterly overwhelmed by the bad guy, or escape without a scratch. There's no real "fighting".
There wasn't a single point in the movie where I was ever even wondering "how will they get out of this", let alone on the edge of my seat. It was boring.
Oh come on. They drop off old-Spock on a planet that's apparently closer to Vulcan than the Moon is to us. Then they go off and start blowing up the planet. Now there's a Federation base is about 10 km away from his cave, which he is fully aware of, and he just sits there and waits?
> Forking the time line so they don't have to pay attention to the original was brilliant
Brilliant? If you "don't have to pay attention to the original" just make this _exact_ same movie but change the character names and call the ship the USS Zamfir. Presto, all problems solved.
> Most of the movies I've hated have been because of the bad characters and/or plots
Which is precisely the problem with this one. "Damb it Jim!". Uggg. Kirk was a lightweight from start to end, someone with a superiority complex that was utterly unbelievable. The whole opening scene with the crying baby made me want to gag. And why the hell were there monsters in it?
Really, this is a movie for children. The fact that the previews were Transformers 2 and Night at the Museum 2 demonstrates this pretty conclusively.
How is it this movie is getting such great reviews? It's terrible.
I knew something was seriously wrong when the previews started. Night in the Museum 2 and Transformers 2 were the headliners. Every one in the preview set was a kids action movie. Uh oh...
And that's all this was, a kid's action movie. There was no plot, no storytelling, no character development. It was just one long (endlessly long) action scene. Many scenes were completely useless in terms of developing the movie (the stolen car, are you joking?). The bad guy wasn't bad, and spends what, 5 minutes on the screen? The action was almost completely soulless, just space-o-blasters shooting at this, then that, then the other thing. Actually there was one major exception, I thought the fight on the drill was well done. Scotty's arrival on the Enterprise was also amusing.
I guess if you're a 15 year old boy this is a great movie. If you're over 30 and like it, I think you're retarded.
Precisely. And even the builders will agree that it's unlikely LHC will do that. I hope I'm wrong.
> Until now, I think HEP has basked in the glow of the remarkable mid-20th century advances in nuclear physics
Indeed. And the late 60's particle zoo. Back then you could build an accelerator and be pretty sure it would generate new physics. Today it's the other way around.
> having speculative stuff like LHC at a small reduction in funding for other things.
The LHC budget would pay for every single major ground based telescope. These are generating real, new physics. The SM can't explain any of their observations - dark energy, dark matter, large scale structure, etc.
> Ignoring basic research is short sighted
Are you sure you understand the term "basic"? Because LHC isn't it.
> The true purpose of the LHC is to uncover the unknown by probing energy ranges that have never been seen before.
The LHC has energy to find the Higgs and not much else. There's nothing in range for the newer models. If it does find anything else, THAT will be interesting. $16 billion interesting? No.
Nuclear medicine accelerators are descendants of x-ray machines, not betatrons. Linacs have many uses, only a few of which have anything to do with HEP.
> It shows remarkable short-sightedness to publically fund only here-and-now practical applications
I'm not talking about "here and now", I'm talking about ever.
Are you sure you understand this point? LHC is being built to demonstrate something we already think we know. There is absolutely no science that comes out of LHC, unless it fails. If it finds the Higgs, we learn absolutely nothing.
That is not the case for HEP in the past. In the past, in the 60's say, every time you turned on an accelerator you found something you never saw before. Every time there was a new particle there was a new problem. This is key: it was the experiments that led to the physics.
It was a decade of hard work that finally solved this via QCG. But since then, every single discovery that's come out of HEP was _pre-predicted_ by QCG (et all). There hasn't been any new physics in ages. And now we're spending $16 billion to find the one remaining particle the others didn't find. Any why? Because there's nothing else to do in HEP. It's a dead science.
This is a colossal waste of money. Just be happy Congress figured that out and killed the Texastron. What, you don't remember Texastron? Exactly, THAT'S how important this really is.
> Strangely enough this intention just arrives at a time where scientists are about to harvest the fruits of LHC.
Uhhh, which are what, exactly? The mass of the Higgs? Yeah, that's worth 16 billion.
Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.
Still waiting for my top-quark amplifier...
> Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit
I call BS. Demonstration please, using the example above.
> The US stimulated its economy by a factor of 10 more then what it put into landing on the moon
No it didn't. If you look at this claim, made by NASA of course, the reality of it comes crashing down. They include things that had absolutely nothing to do with the space missions, including Tang and Velcro. The primary direct outcome was engineering
> transiters and LCDs to name only two
Transist_o_rs were invented as part of a very focused and practical development program at Bell Labs, which you can read about in "Crystal Fire". The key advance was discovered by accident. They had to develop the theory of how they worked as part of the program.
LCDs were developed over a period stretching about 100 years, all of it experimental up to the 1960s, when it became a major practical development effort. There's very little pure science involved. The wiki article covers it fairly well.
Don't get me wrong, there's been a lot of purely theoretical research that makes it into everyday life. Quantum is a good example. But in the VAST majority of cases the science was discovered as a part of basic research and had to wait on the theory. There's many, many products in daily use today that we still have no idea how they work.
> They will probably have to kill Apple TV, though.
As an owner ($200 refurb, what the hell) I have to say I'd be fine if they killed it. I'd be happier if they just fixed it though, and it really doesn't need much work.
All it needs is an external DVD player, like the one from the Air, and an external tuner (w/CableCard). Plug them in via the USB2, pass through the video, and suddenly it becomes one bazillion times more useful. I get one little stack, plug it into my TV/monitor on one end and tuner on the other, and everything's done.
Yeah I know, I have broadband, I don't need a DVD - sure, but tell that to my kid. And no matter how fast that broadband gets, there's times when I want to watch Greatest American Hero RIGHT NOW, but then there's times I just want to channel surf. iTunes is great for the former, but will never, ever, be the later. None of the online services are, yet.
> dealing with is greatly diminished by the time it hits the earth. In space, you can generate roughly 5 (or was it 20) times more energy from the
5, and most of that is because you get 24 hours of sunlight, not 8.
> No night time shortages
We don't have any of those anyway. It's peak power that's the problem.
> solve the environmental damage potential of them
*coff* What, you mean we're improving the environment by spewing massive amounts of toxic chemicals into the air with every launch? You do know what rockets are powered with, right?
> starts out creating way more energy in the first place
Do the math. No really, do the math and you show me how this works. I've tried it, and I don't see it.
Slashdot Mirror
There's really no point in continuing with this experiment now.
I have strong confidence in the technical side of this project, meaning that I believe that ITER will work, and generate net energy. Unfortunately it's not clear to me how much we'll actually learn in that process; this is an engineering project more than a scientific one.
I have zero confidence that the ITER path (and related approaches) is one that will ever result in commercial power generation. The energy density of ITER is far too low to be useful, and the only way to improve that is to make more expensive machines. There's no evidence that the technology scales down in cost, and that any approach along this "big dumb" line is useful. Very smart people at the power companies have already given it a big thumbs-down.
This money needs to be turned to other projects. For the price of ITER we can fund a whole bunch of smaller science projects, projects that at least have some hope of being actually useful. HiPER is one that cries out for funding, but so does magnetized target fusion and the polywell. Unlike ITER, the physics of these experiments is not yet understood, but IF they do work then they are FAR less expensive to build. That is a much better way to spend research money IMHO.
> Shake phone to shuffle "citation needed" tags around page.
After all, they are placed essentially at random...
Maury
> Instead a flat fee of $31 for the artist makes me excited that this could really be big for indie artists
Wow, yeah.
So this basically reduces the major labels to their back catalog. No one that knows about this service would sign unless they already have major sales - and that's an even STRONGER argument for using this service. You retain all rights, get 40% of the take, and costs you one lunch bill?
What freaks me out is that the labels, after staring this in the face for decades, still can't figure out how to sell their catalog. They have 10,000,000 songs in the database, but the only thing they can figure out is how to sell the newest 40.
Maury
> The lack of studio-mandated voice-over certainly makes the film more moody and atmospheric.
Give me a break. It leaves frustratingly long periods of blank looks while the actors sit there and stare at each other during the periods that formerly held the dialog.
Maury
> As he asked Dr. Dehner in TOS about Gary Mitchell and his god-like powers, "But what will he learn along the way?" In the reboot, the answer is basically "nothing"
But that does bring up one of the other few scenes I liked. After watching one of the worst bits of acting in the movie during the whatever Maru simulation, Spock points out that the entire idea is to teach the fleet how to operate even facing certain death. As Spock points, by "winning" the scenario, Kirk actually LOST the scenario.
Now that, I think, is an interesting point. If they had gone down this road a little more I think I might have enjoyed the movie a little more. But no, after pointing this out they then turn around completely and allow the character to do anything he wants with no fear whatsoever.
Thinking back over it again, I realize in retrospect that what made the earlier shows (not a huge fan, have watched some of the original and NG) work was that Kirk wasn't superhuman, he was _experienced_. His capabilities were clearly hard won, and you could see this in the stars on his chest. And Picard? That character oozed experience in every missing hair on his head. We weren't watching superhumans, we were watching extremely _qualified_ humans, which is, in my books, a very different and much more believable reality.
> By doing so, they are not constrained by everything that has come before and can instead create something new and exciting.
So why didn't they?
> The story of the movie was flimsy
The _story_ was flimsy? What wasn't? Most of the acting was poor to middling, at best. There was no attempt at any development, either plot nor character. It was all action action action.
And I didn't find the action - with the exception of the sword fight - particularly interesting either. Ships are either utterly overwhelmed by the bad guy, or escape without a scratch. There's no real "fighting".
There wasn't a single point in the movie where I was ever even wondering "how will they get out of this", let alone on the edge of my seat. It was boring.
> Would you rather there be no more Star Trek?
Sure, absolutely.
Nor am I upset that JJ didn't get to do "Lawrence of Arabia II".
Oh come on. They drop off old-Spock on a planet that's apparently closer to Vulcan than the Moon is to us. Then they go off and start blowing up the planet. Now there's a Federation base is about 10 km away from his cave, which he is fully aware of, and he just sits there and waits?
Huh?
> Forking the time line so they don't have to pay attention to the original was brilliant
Brilliant? If you "don't have to pay attention to the original" just make this _exact_ same movie but change the character names and call the ship the USS Zamfir. Presto, all problems solved.
> Most of the movies I've hated have been because of the bad characters and/or plots
Which is precisely the problem with this one. "Damb it Jim!". Uggg. Kirk was a lightweight from start to end, someone with a superiority complex that was utterly unbelievable. The whole opening scene with the crying baby made me want to gag. And why the hell were there monsters in it?
Really, this is a movie for children. The fact that the previews were Transformers 2 and Night at the Museum 2 demonstrates this pretty conclusively.
> This movie is a generic action movie that has had a "Star Trek" label slapped on it
Exactly. And that would be fine with me, IF it was better. This is more Transformers than Terminator.
How is it this movie is getting such great reviews? It's terrible.
I knew something was seriously wrong when the previews started. Night in the Museum 2 and Transformers 2 were the headliners. Every one in the preview set was a kids action movie. Uh oh...
And that's all this was, a kid's action movie. There was no plot, no storytelling, no character development. It was just one long (endlessly long) action scene. Many scenes were completely useless in terms of developing the movie (the stolen car, are you joking?). The bad guy wasn't bad, and spends what, 5 minutes on the screen? The action was almost completely soulless, just space-o-blasters shooting at this, then that, then the other thing. Actually there was one major exception, I thought the fight on the drill was well done. Scotty's arrival on the Enterprise was also amusing.
I guess if you're a 15 year old boy this is a great movie. If you're over 30 and like it, I think you're retarded.
Maury
> These things are called spin-offs, much like velro and tang from NASA.
Neither velco or tang were spin offs from NASA.
> wow, talk about idiocy.
Indeed.
> At any rate, when it comes down to opportunity cost for the funding, picking another research instrument as a target
That's not the argument though. The argument is that *this* experiment is a waste of money. Here, I'll put it in capital letters so everyone sees it:
IF LHC WORKS AS EXPECTED, WE LEARN NOTHING NEW.
Doesn't that worry you?
Maury
> There has been no paradigm shift.
Precisely. And even the builders will agree that it's unlikely LHC will do that. I hope I'm wrong.
> Until now, I think HEP has basked in the glow of the remarkable mid-20th century advances in nuclear physics
Indeed. And the late 60's particle zoo. Back then you could build an accelerator and be pretty sure it would generate new physics. Today it's the other way around.
> having speculative stuff like LHC at a small reduction in funding for other things.
The LHC budget would pay for every single major ground based telescope. These are generating real, new physics. The SM can't explain any of their observations - dark energy, dark matter, large scale structure, etc.
> Ignoring basic research is short sighted
Are you sure you understand the term "basic"? Because LHC isn't it.
> The true purpose of the LHC is to uncover the unknown by probing energy ranges that have never been seen before.
The LHC has energy to find the Higgs and not much else. There's nothing in range for the newer models. If it does find anything else, THAT will be interesting. $16 billion interesting? No.
Nuclear medicine accelerators are descendants of x-ray machines, not betatrons. Linacs have many uses, only a few of which have anything to do with HEP.
> It shows remarkable short-sightedness to publically fund only here-and-now practical applications
I'm not talking about "here and now", I'm talking about ever.
Are you sure you understand this point? LHC is being built to demonstrate something we already think we know. There is absolutely no science that comes out of LHC, unless it fails. If it finds the Higgs, we learn absolutely nothing.
That is not the case for HEP in the past. In the past, in the 60's say, every time you turned on an accelerator you found something you never saw before. Every time there was a new particle there was a new problem. This is key: it was the experiments that led to the physics.
It was a decade of hard work that finally solved this via QCG. But since then, every single discovery that's come out of HEP was _pre-predicted_ by QCG (et all). There hasn't been any new physics in ages. And now we're spending $16 billion to find the one remaining particle the others didn't find. Any why? Because there's nothing else to do in HEP. It's a dead science.
This is a colossal waste of money. Just be happy Congress figured that out and killed the Texastron. What, you don't remember Texastron? Exactly, THAT'S how important this really is.
Maury
> Strangely enough this intention just arrives at a time where scientists are about to harvest the fruits of LHC.
Uhhh, which are what, exactly? The mass of the Higgs? Yeah, that's worth 16 billion.
Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.
Still waiting for my top-quark amplifier...
> Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit
I call BS. Demonstration please, using the example above.
> The US stimulated its economy by a factor of 10 more then what it put into landing on the moon
No it didn't. If you look at this claim, made by NASA of course, the reality of it comes crashing down. They include things that had absolutely nothing to do with the space missions, including Tang and Velcro. The primary direct outcome was engineering
> transiters and LCDs to name only two
Transist_o_rs were invented as part of a very focused and practical development program at Bell Labs, which you can read about in "Crystal Fire". The key advance was discovered by accident. They had to develop the theory of how they worked as part of the program.
LCDs were developed over a period stretching about 100 years, all of it experimental up to the 1960s, when it became a major practical development effort. There's very little pure science involved. The wiki article covers it fairly well.
Don't get me wrong, there's been a lot of purely theoretical research that makes it into everyday life. Quantum is a good example. But in the VAST majority of cases the science was discovered as a part of basic research and had to wait on the theory. There's many, many products in daily use today that we still have no idea how they work.
Maury
> They will probably have to kill Apple TV, though.
As an owner ($200 refurb, what the hell) I have to say I'd be fine if they killed it. I'd be happier if they just fixed it though, and it really doesn't need much work.
All it needs is an external DVD player, like the one from the Air, and an external tuner (w/CableCard). Plug them in via the USB2, pass through the video, and suddenly it becomes one bazillion times more useful. I get one little stack, plug it into my TV/monitor on one end and tuner on the other, and everything's done.
Yeah I know, I have broadband, I don't need a DVD - sure, but tell that to my kid. And no matter how fast that broadband gets, there's times when I want to watch Greatest American Hero RIGHT NOW, but then there's times I just want to channel surf. iTunes is great for the former, but will never, ever, be the later. None of the online services are, yet.
Now fix the frigged menus.
Maury
> 1,700 gigawatt-hours from the array.
In total, I assume? Nailed it: look at my post earlier in this thread.
Maury
> dealing with is greatly diminished by the time it hits the earth. In space, you can generate roughly 5 (or was it 20) times more energy from the
5, and most of that is because you get 24 hours of sunlight, not 8.
> No night time shortages
We don't have any of those anyway. It's peak power that's the problem.
> solve the environmental damage potential of them
*coff* What, you mean we're improving the environment by spewing massive amounts of toxic chemicals into the air with every launch? You do know what rockets are powered with, right?
> starts out creating way more energy in the first place
Do the math. No really, do the math and you show me how this works. I've tried it, and I don't see it.
Maury
I notice I switched AM0 and AM1, AM0 ~1600 W/m^2. This is has little effect on the numbers.
Maury